Hellraiser

Hellraiser (1987) – Brian McNail

Ladies and Gentlemen, Cenobites of all ages this is Hellraiser.

Our movie opens in a Middle Eastern cantina where a transaction for a golden cube takes place. One cut scene later and we see the purchaser opening the box surrounded by candles. After a few moments of fiddling with the box strange blue lights flicker from the box causing chains and hooks to appear out of no where that pierce the guy's flesh. Following this the Cenobites Pin Head and The Female are seen cleaning up the remains of our first victim and restoring the cube to its original state.

We learn that our victim’s name was Frank and that his brother Larry is moving into the family home along with his wife Julia. Larry’s daughter Kirsty calls and the two discuss where Kirsty is going to live. Larry and Julia start the move in process while, Kirsty walks along the harbor area eventually walking to the house (good thing she knew where it was). Julia is upstairs ripping the head off a woman in one of Frank’s photos she found and has a flashback to the first time she met Frank just before her wedding to Larry. Her fantasy is interrupted by Kirsty and she goes walking upstairs to the room Frank was killed in. We are then back in flashback mode where we see Frank and Julia once had an affair on her white wedding dress.

While trying to move furniture upstairs, Larry has his hand ripped open by a nail and goes to find Julia in Frank’s room. All of the blood that is hitting the floor is being absorbed through the cracks. Later Julia hears a noise coming from the room while going to bed and opens the door and finds Frank. Frank explains that Larry’s blood brought him back to life and that he needs Julia’s help. He needs more blood to completely heal. After Julia lies in bed for a while remembering having sex with Frank she goes to the attic and tells Frank she will help him.

The next day Julia goes out to a local singles bar and picks up a stranger and brings him home. The guy is dispatched with a claw hammer to the head and Frank tells Julia to leave the room as she doesn’t need to see what happens next. She enters Frank’s room again and he tells her his nerves are working again and that she must help him with one or two more people before the Cenobites find out he has escaped. Upon the death of the next victim we see that Frank now has lungs and can smoke a cigarette and shows her a golden puzzle box.

He explains to Julia that the Cenobites showed him both pain and pleasure and we see all four of them for the first time together as they tortured Frank. Later on Larry is watching boxing with Julia when they hear a noise up stairs. Larry goes to check on it but Julia tries to stop him from going to Frank’s room by offering sex but he insists on checking it out anyways finding Frank’s room to be empty. Upon the couple going into their bedroom we see Frank walking around watching Larry have his way with Julia from the closet. When Julia sees Frank coming at Larry with a knife she starts to object causing Frank to look on disapprovingly and causing Larry to wonder why his wife is all over him one minute and then doesn’t want to have sex with him the next.

Julia brings another guy into the den of evil and nails him three or four times with the hammer. Kirsty who saw Julia and the guy enter the house, hears the guys screaming and comes running into the house as Frank goes about his business. Kirsty and Frank have a brief fight scene with Frank using one-liners that would make Bruce Campbell proud ending with Kirsty grabbing and throwing the box outside. She flees the house picking up the box eventually passing out on the side of the road.

Kirsty awakens in the hospital wondering how she got there. The doctor tells her that she was holding on to the box and places it on her bedside table and locks her in the hospital room (you can do that to patients?). Being alone locked in a room with a puzzle box, she of course plays with it and figures it out causing it to open. Surprisingly the box doesn’t kill her instantly like it did Frank it only opens the wall, which is covering a long corridor. Kirsty starts walking down the hallway where she is chased by a Cenobite. She runs back down the corridor to her room and starts to put the box back together again when her room begins to morph and everything starts exploding. She then is backed against the wall by the Cenobite Chatterer who holds her while Pinhead explains that she summoned them by opening the box. She tells them to go to hell, but the foursome cannot go alone. She offers Frank in her place; the Cenobites deny this as no one has ever escaped before. Pinhead says if Frank confesses then maybe MAYBE they will not tear her soul apart.

Julia and Frank are having a discussion in the hallway when Larry comes home. She says she has something show him. Meanwhile Kirsty’s boyfriend arrives at the hospital to find her missing. Frank is then seen in Larry’s skin and has sex with Julia. We find out when Kirsty arrives at the house that Frank not only has Larry’s skin but his voice as well. Larry/Frank explains to Kirsty that Julia explained everything and that he killed Frank, Kirsty tells her dad/uncle that she has to see the body. Kirsty sees the steaming bones of her father and is locked in the room with the four Cenobites. Kirsty escapes the room and discovers that Frank is inside her father’s body/skin and tears a large gash out him. Frank kills Julia by mistake but uses her blood to heal and follows Kirsty up the stairs.

Kirsty hides in the room where Julia has been hiding the corpses and sneaks out of the room only to stop and cry at the top of the stairs. Frank exits his room and chases her back into his room. Telling Kirsty that everything is okay she is with her dear ole Uncle Frank now. This confession by his own lips was just what the Cenobites were waiting to hear as they bring out their toy box and tell Kirsty to leave as this is not for her eyes. Frank starts to stab her when one of the chain hooks grabs hold of him followed by twelve more as he gives his final piece of dialog “Jesus Wept” before being pulled apart (would have looked awesome in 3D).

Kirsty goes to leave the house but is stopped by The Female. Kirsty grabs the cube and starts to put it back together as each part sends a Cenobite back to hell in the crappiest of neon light explosions in cinema history and manages to get it mostly back together without any major harm befalling her or her boyfriend who shows up out of nowhere.

Upon making it out of the house it starts to burn to the ground and she throws the cube into a fire pit where the bum from earlier simply steps inside the flames, picks it up and turns into what looks like a gargoyle and apparently delivers it back the cantina in the middle east where it is for sale again bringing us back full circle (and setting up a sequel).
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For the most part Hellraiser is a great film, it is never really slow as a lot of horror movies in the 80s had a tendency to do before starting the final lead/build up to the ending. The score of this movie is awesome and the gore is just what it needed to be. It isn’t over done and in a movie based of torture it could have been overdone very easily. Although I will admit that the repetitive skull bashing with a hammer to three victims was a bit redundant, it could have been changed up for each victim. Not to over analyze but I don’t think Julia’s heart was in it to kill the guys.

The only other problem I had with the film is the run time of 93 minutes is too short for all the detail that Barker wanted to get across. Perhaps in the director’s cut it is spaced out a little bit better I've yet to see that version so I cannot say one way or another. Although I think a little more could have or needed to end up on the cutting room floor. This movie is based off a novel that Clive Barker wrote and then adapted for the movie and I guess he just wanted to make sure it was all in there even the stuff that didn't translate to the final cut of the film very well.

I give Hellraiser a 4 out of 5.